Power and Love.

Carl Emerson said:

Firstly, those who insist on Love and deny power - reducing the actions of believers to study, personal devotion and gathering, deny the empowering that evidences the Kingdom.
Such gatherings try to touch the world, but are powerless to demonstrate the Kingship of Jesus over evil bondages, sickness and disease.
Such gatherings do well to preserve fundamental truths but sadly have become little more than a museum to a faith that once was.

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Carl Emerson said:

It seems a main contention regarding the function of Church today boils down to the relationship between power and love.

We have those who quote 1 Cor 13 as if its message eclipses 1 Cor 12 - yet the great commission and indeed the actions of early believers confirm that unity and community was foundational and the gifts were operating to confirm the Kingdom coming to both Jew and Gentile.

Sadly neither of the two main camps attempting to grab the attention of believers and the unsaved have successfully combined these two foundational elements of faith.

Firstly, those who insist on Love and deny power - reducing the actions of believers to study, personal devotion and gathering, deny the empowering that evidences the Kingdom.
Such gatherings try to touch the world, but are powerless to demonstrate the Kingship of Jesus over evil bondages, sickness and disease.
Such gatherings do well to preserve fundamental truths but sadly have become little more than a museum to a faith that once was.

Secondly those who insist on Power, in the main lack the Love - the ingredient that in combination with genuine divine power, should testify to the new and living Kingdom.
The very essential foundation on which the gifts evidencing the Kingdom need to operate is Love and Unity.
This requires necessary community in which these gifts genuinely develop, the least are heard and His Voice eventually prevails.
Sadly few make this journey because the cost is high in working through inevitable relationship issues - it is much easier to just Lord it over and present a staged version of the kingdom in action.

There is a third group who stand on the liturgical traditions, as if form and control are essential to true fellowship. They maintain an orderly presentation of His Living Kingdom. In this the transition from temple to meeting house is largely lost and healthy community is also very rare.


So this is a call to review what it means to gather in Him - a return to first Love - sharing and equality - Worship and Love never ceasing - leadership that does not 'Lord it Over'
This will be attractive to the World, this is essential to true evangelism (John 17:23 "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me".)

Community is a natural response to persecution - this is why the Jews are so good at it.

Let's return to First Love before we are forced to - as hatred of the faith increases.

Click to expand...

Carl Emerson said:

It seems a main contention regarding the function of Church today boils down to the relationship between power and love.

We have those who quote 1 Cor 13 as if its message eclipses 1 Cor 12 - yet the great commission and indeed the actions of early believers confirm that unity and community was foundational and the gifts were operating to confirm the Kingdom coming to both Jew and Gentile.

Sadly neither of the two main camps attempting to grab the attention of believers and the unsaved have successfully combined these two foundational elements of faith.

Firstly, those who insist on Love and deny power - reducing the actions of believers to study, personal devotion and gathering, deny the empowering that evidences the Kingdom.
Such gatherings try to touch the world, but are powerless to demonstrate the Kingship of Jesus over evil bondages, sickness and disease.
Such gatherings do well to preserve fundamental truths but sadly have become little more than a museum to a faith that once was.

Secondly those who insist on Power, in the main lack the Love - the ingredient that in combination with genuine divine power, should testify to the new and living Kingdom.
The very essential foundation on which the gifts evidencing the Kingdom need to operate is Love and Unity.
This requires necessary community in which these gifts genuinely develop, the least are heard and His Voice eventually prevails.
Sadly few make this journey because the cost is high in working through inevitable relationship issues - it is much easier to just Lord it over and present a staged version of the kingdom in action.

There is a third group who stand on the liturgical traditions, as if form and control are essential to true fellowship. They maintain an orderly presentation of His Living Kingdom. In this the transition from temple to meeting house is largely lost and healthy community is also very rare.


So this is a call to review what it means to gather in Him - a return to first Love - sharing and equality - Worship and Love never ceasing - leadership that does not 'Lord it Over'
This will be attractive to the World, this is essential to true evangelism (John 17:23 "I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me".)

Community is a natural response to persecution - this is why the Jews are so good at it.

Let's return to First Love before we are forced to - as hatred of the faith increases.

Click to expand...

Carl Emerson said:

I wrote this cack in 2009...

Living our Christian Faith Together.​

In my first essay I spoke about returning to unity-based fellowship as a stepping stone to rediscovering the power of Jesus.
Today I have another issue for us to consider, the neglect of community in our modern Christian lives.

In the last five decades I have seen the erosion of community in society in general. The corner store was squeezed out by the supermarket; the local urban cop is no more. We know few others in our streets these days. Spontaneous local support has been largely replaced by professional ‘care-givers’ A church elder once regularly visited every family in the parish. Nowadays the churches are often closed during the week and the needy soul no longer has access to a caring father heart, rather a professional counsellor at a cost.

As if God had an answer to this trend, back in the 70’s many mainline churches experienced very significant growth, assisted initially by the evangelism crusades of Billy Graham, and later Luis Palau and others, but more significantly, a re-discovery of signs and wonders Christianity akin to that recorded in the book of Acts.
There was a great deal of bible study going on then, as leaders and lay alike tried to understand how this new mode of Christian life with phenomena like healing and prophecy, and a strong sense of community among believers should be lived.
Families were beginning to break bread together with friends – unheard of before.
At that time various attempts were made to establish some form of Christian community with varying success. There was a tension between the house meetings that spontaneously sprung up and the official church-based activities. Would they try to grow into churches, would control be lost? Would the church lose out on the tithes?
During this period of New Zealand church history there were many outstanding miracles as Jesus was for a time able to move with a fluid body of believers but this was not to last.
Strong ‘cover’ teaching began to reign in many of the believers who were enjoying a vibrant but threatening walk with Jesus. Little theological room was given to the notion of a corporate cooperating body of believers in a district having daily fellowship outside the organised programmes of the church.

Now the mandate for corporate living goes back a long way in fact scripturally precedes the birth of the church. Further the first churches functioned with a vibrant community in support, in which there was sharing of possessions, elimination of material hardship and a resulting material equality (Acts2 2:42-47 and 2 Cor 8: 13-15)
We are light years away from this today and are missing out on being the visible testimony of Gods love in the process.
Jesus indicated in John 17:23 that the visible unity of the believers was a key aspect of evangelism. The modern church has lacked significant conversion growth for decades for this reason.
Not only do we lack this vibrant community today but many of the modern churches are without shame adopting a business or an army model, alienating those who naturally seek a family experience.

What then is the answer?
We need to let the Church attend to matters like the call to corporate worship, apostolic teaching, and prayer while the believers in community are devoted to neighbourhood fellowship, lay ministry, market place evangelism, as a separate yet co-operating spiritual entity, visible to the world. Then the gathering of the saints for church worship would be an occasion to share testimony of what the Lord has done, with the associated spontaneous response of praise and thanks upon which true worship naturally builds.
The challenge is to implement a structural change to the way we do our Christianity.
No longer should all our Christian activity proceed from the ‘vision’ of the local church. Families with a like call to Christian living should combine and become an effective expression of Jesus in their neighbourhood. This movement would cut across the denominational divide and feed back new life into all the churches. Many believers who have given up attending church would relate to such a vibrant non-church life and return to fellowship.
This model tends to operate in parts of the world where Christianity is under persecution. While it is true that true faith under pressure produces resurrection life, why wait for things to get worse when we can combine now?
There is little opportunity for Church leaders to step outside traditional thinking and grapple with the issues being raised here let alone implement such change.
That change can however happen from initiatives that you and I make. I invite you to pray about who you can meet with on a regular basis to pray together and with God’s direction begin to combine together as we read in the early chapters of Acts.

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Yuwang said:

Glad to see some one noticing the situation with organizations that call themselves churches. Most of them are incorporated, making them creatures of the State seeking limited liability, not he Will & Desire of the Creator, Yahvveh/YahShua.

Besides that, most churches, incorporated or not, worship the Edomite, Ashkenaz, Khazar Jew anti-Christs who falsely call themselves Israel, and make the Perfect Word, Logic and Law of YahShua of none effect upon Earth. Why should the King of kings help idolizing incorporated "churches" when they negate Him and serve those who hated, slandered and murdered Him and His followers and still do?

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David Lamb said:

We don't have churches that are "incorporated" here in the UK, as far as I am aware.

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Carl Emerson said:

I wrote this back in 2009...

Living our Christian Faith Together.​

In my first essay I spoke about returning to unity-based fellowship as a stepping stone to rediscovering the power of Jesus.
Today I have another issue for us to consider, the neglect of community in our modern Christian lives.

In the last five decades I have seen the erosion of community in society in general. The corner store was squeezed out by the supermarket; the local urban cop is no more. We know few others in our streets these days. Spontaneous local support has been largely replaced by professional ‘care-givers’ A church elder once regularly visited every family in the parish. Nowadays the churches are often closed during the week and the needy soul no longer has access to a caring father heart, rather a professional counsellor at a cost.

As if God had an answer to this trend, back in the 70’s many mainline churches experienced very significant growth, assisted initially by the evangelism crusades of Billy Graham, and later Luis Palau and others, but more significantly, a re-discovery of signs and wonders Christianity akin to that recorded in the book of Acts.
There was a great deal of bible study going on then, as leaders and lay alike tried to understand how this new mode of Christian life with phenomena like healing and prophecy, and a strong sense of community among believers should be lived.
Families were beginning to break bread together with friends – unheard of before.
At that time various attempts were made to establish some form of Christian community with varying success. There was a tension between the house meetings that spontaneously sprung up and the official church-based activities. Would they try to grow into churches, would control be lost? Would the church lose out on the tithes?
During this period of New Zealand church history there were many outstanding miracles as Jesus was for a time able to move with a fluid body of believers but this was not to last.
Strong ‘cover’ teaching began to reign in many of the believers who were enjoying a vibrant but threatening walk with Jesus. Little theological room was given to the notion of a corporate cooperating body of believers in a district having daily fellowship outside the organised programmes of the church.

Now the mandate for corporate living goes back a long way in fact scripturally precedes the birth of the church. Further the first churches functioned with a vibrant community in support, in which there was sharing of possessions, elimination of material hardship and a resulting material equality (Acts2 2:42-47 and 2 Cor 8: 13-15)
We are light years away from this today and are missing out on being the visible testimony of Gods love in the process.
Jesus indicated in John 17:23 that the visible unity of the believers was a key aspect of evangelism. The modern church has lacked significant conversion growth for decades for this reason.
Not only do we lack this vibrant community today but many of the modern churches are without shame adopting a business or an army model, alienating those who naturally seek a family experience.

What then is the answer?
We need to let the Church attend to matters like the call to corporate worship, apostolic teaching, and prayer while the believers in community are devoted to neighbourhood fellowship, lay ministry, market place evangelism, as a separate yet co-operating spiritual entity, visible to the world. Then the gathering of the saints for church worship would be an occasion to share testimony of what the Lord has done, with the associated spontaneous response of praise and thanks upon which true worship naturally builds.
The challenge is to implement a structural change to the way we do our Christianity.
No longer should all our Christian activity proceed from the ‘vision’ of the local church. Families with a like call to Christian living should combine and become an effective expression of Jesus in their neighbourhood. This movement would cut across the denominational divide and feed back new life into all the churches. Many believers who have given up attending church would relate to such a vibrant non-church life and return to fellowship.
This model tends to operate in parts of the world where Christianity is under persecution. While it is true that true faith under pressure produces resurrection life, why wait for things to get worse when we can combine now?
There is little opportunity for Church leaders to step outside traditional thinking and grapple with the issues being raised here let alone implement such change.
That change can however happen from initiatives that you and I make. I invite you to pray about who you can meet with on a regular basis to pray together and with God’s direction begin to combine together as we read in the early chapters of Acts.

Click to expand...

Yuwang said:

In the aspect of incorporated churches, if what David Lamb says is correct, that may be good. I don't know anything about churches in England, except, I suspect they support a lot of trash as do Yankee churches, but maybe not. The English Kings and Queens have been manipulated if not controlled by the Bankers of London since Cromwell.

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Yuwang said:

Thanks to David Lamb for Your report about churches in England & basically The Church of England.
Nothing wrong with a national church and a king. However, as with the "church" of ancient Israel, folks can go way astray as well as their kings, leading to big problems, as they have been warned of, over and over again.
Yahveh said, Keep My Commandments and be a great nation. Dishonor them and those who hate you rule over you.
How Great is England with it's worship of Edom and priests of Baal?

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